What would it take?

I have been wondering what it would take for people today to take to the streets to protest the current state of affairs in our country. At lunch today I had an interesting conversation with a colleague who had been in school in the '60s and described the protests that occurred related to the Vietnam War and the struggle for Civil Rights. Today, we have what amounts to a perpetual war in Iraq - and we may be soon at war with Iran. I wonder what it would take for people to finally say that they are fed up? I think that we have, perhaps, done better to work to support our troops - - I hope we are doing better at this task, but we seem to be lacking in leaders who have a level of nuance when it comes to discussing our foreign policy and who might be able to help us to both support our troops, and also seek solutions that won't take decades of occupation in the Middle East.

What would it take for people to take a stand on this issue, and so many others? I am also complicit in this non-action. Feeling relatively comfortable in my present state of economy, I feel the inertia of the status quo keeping me from standing firm with those who are working for justice. I feel the inertia of the status quo that whispers to me that I shouldn't rock the boat, lest I may fall in water. However, perhaps falling in is what is needed. I remember being at Bates College when the first Iraq War broke out in the Winter of 1991, and we took to the streets! And, from this vantage point, that military action looks like it may have fallen within the requirements of a Just War (perhaps). But today, we hear of Waterboarding, of some very strange and scary practices with detainees at Gitmo, the ongoing work of the School of the Americas (School of the Assassins?) to train mercenaries and "security" forces for corrupt regimes. We hear of this, we hear of the actions that our government is taking, yet there is not much criticism of these actions. Why not? What is keeping us glued to our sofas? What is keeping us from turning off American Idol?

I am not sure, but whether you are in full support of our current administration's policies or not, I would love to have a debate about it. I would love to hear some experts and ordinary people go head to head on these issues. I would love to see some Anti-War (and even "pro-war") marches!

What would it take to get people off their fat behinds to step up and stand for something?

"You've got to stand right up for something, or you're goin' to fall for everything" John Cougar Mellencamp

Waking Up to War with Iran? (from Brian McLaren)

Are we ready to take to the streets if the Bush Administration puts us into war in Iran?
Or, are we ready to enlist?
Should we be more afraid of our own government than of Iran?
What should Christians do in this context of protracted war?
Brian McLaren has challenged us in his blog entry on the "God's Politics Blog" that begins to address these questions.

Will we have ears to hear?

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Waking Up to War with Iran (by Brian McLaren)

I am afraid, but not for the reasons our government is telling me to be afraid. I am afraid that I may wake up one morning soon to discover that our government has launched a preemptive attack on Iran. While our government is issuing national orange alerts about "them," I wonder whether we Christians should be issuing global orange alerts about our own government.

I am disgusted, concerned, appalled, and furious about the current saber-rattling of our government - so reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. My feelings intensify in many of our presidential candidates' forums, where each candidate seems to be in a hissing contest, declaring that he or she is the loudest hisser against terrorism - as if the only danger in the world is posed by an evil "them" and not by evil resident within us. Our Congress' bipartisan vote last month, which labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, seems to me to be handing our president a "go to war free" card, another rather frightening development.

Meanwhile, our media are becoming an echo chamber of fear: after all, fear keeps people tuned in, which means better ratings, and thus more advertising income. Fear pays - economically and politically - but sadly, we haven't reached the point yet of fearing fear itself and what it may do if it keeps accelerating.

On top of these fears, I suspect that many of my fellow Christians will, in the name of God and Jesus and Christianity and the Bible, support and justify a preemptive war on Iran before and after it happens - no matter how unprovoked, no matter how brutal, and no matter how foolish and costly, both financially and morally. Forgetting even the traditional Christian criteria for just war, and forgetting the falsified "intelligence" used to justify our last preemptive war, we Christians in the U.S., I fear, will once again be high on credulity and low on scrutiny - all too eager to believe what our government tells us to legitimize a pre-emptive attack and feed our growing fears. We Christians who cannot follow this path into another war must ask ourselves two kinds of questions:

1. What will we do if we wake up and find our government has attacked Iran while we were sleeping? What actions - public and private - would be appropriate?
2. What can we do now to decrease the possibility of that occurring? What will we wish we would have done in the weeks and months before the morning after?

Follow along with upcoming Brian McLaren blog entries HERE.